Stung into awareness in the 1980s that it was no longer the undisputed financial grande dame of the West, San Francisco heads into the '90s with much of its gentility intact but with more of a team player mentality. Long regarded as a haughty isolationist, San Francisco is suddenly asking not what its region can do for it, but what it can do for the Bay Area, which has boomed even as the city's job and population growth have stagnated.

Stung into awareness in the 1980s that it was no longer the undisputed financial grande dame of the West, San Francisco heads into the '90s with much of its gentility intact but with more of a team player mentality. Long regarded as a haughty isolationist, San Francisco is suddenly asking not what its region can do for it, but what it can do for the Bay Area, which has boomed even as the city's job and population growth have stagnated.